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Join us for a celebration of Stewart Parker's lyrical novel Hopdance, largely drafted in the early 1970s but unpublished in his own lifetime. In a great tradition of Irish autobiographical fiction that includes James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark, Parker’s poignant novel centres on the amputation of his left leg when he was a 19-year-old university student. Masterful vignettes present the callow protagonist’s life before, during and after this ordeal.

Marilynn Richtarik, Parker's biographer, will read from Stewart Parker's Hopdance (published by The Lilliput Press this year) and discuss the real events upon which it is based and the role it played in Parker's life. Richtarik will also describe her own process of editing the novel and answer questions from the audience.

Stewart Parkerwas born in Belfast in 1941 but also lived and worked in the United States, Scotland, and England. Author of twentieth-century stage classics such as Spokesong (1975), Catchpenny Twist (1977), Nightshade (1980), Northern Star (1984), Heavenly Bodies (1986), and Pentecost (1987), he also wrote award-winning plays for television and radio.

Marilynn Richtarik, a Professor of English at Georgia State University in Atlanta, is based in Belfast this spring as a US Fulbright Scholar. The author of Stewart Parker: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2012), she edited Hopdance.